Triumph, mistake or shame? Jacek Kowalski for the 500th anniversary of Prussian tribute

This year we celebrate a circular anniversary of the Prussian tribute (1525-2025), which in the national imagination inextricably connected with Jan Matejka's vision. However, the large canvas of the Krakow master is not just an illustration of the epochal event. It is simply a historical treatise, ambiguating the success of King Sigismund I.

It's 5 100 years since the Prussian tribute. Anniversary on the 1 hand joyful; on the another – encouraging reflection.

Here in 1525 Poland and Lithuania faced a three-headed opponent. The Moscow Duchy and the state of the Order of Teutonic Knights, supported by Emperor Charles V Habsburg, captured us in ticks. Although the monastic state was a lord of the Polish Crown, but an unruly lentil: the Grand Master Albrecht Hohenzollern, the nephew of King Sigismund I, started another war with him. But he failed. The ruler of Moscow was besides effectively tamed. Sigismund could therefore, if he wanted, incarnate the monastic Prussia into the Crown, especially since Emperor Charles V was temporarily busy fighting the King of France Francis I.

But the Lutheran ferment began to spread in Prussian cities. The Grand Master himself decided to consult Luther on how to improvement the Teutonic Order. In Gdańsk, belonging to the Crown, a heretic tumult exploded. There was a threat that the Grand Master would establish an alliance with Gdańsk. In addition, the news of the conflict of Pavja, in which Emperor Charles V took the King of France prisoner, reached Krakow. He could already intervene for the Order of the Teutonic Knights.

In the face of this threat, King Sigismund withdrew from the incarnation of Prussia to the Crown. In return, he proposed to Albrecht that, while remaining a Polish lentil, he should leave the Order, he should become Protestant (and thus conflicted with the Catholic emperor!), become a secular prince of Prussia and establish his own dynasty. In another words, an arch Catholic monarch – he pushed a comparative to heresy. In the name of averting a dangerous conflict by tearing apart the alliance of your enemies.

The task worked. Albrecht Hohenzollern broke up with the Habsburgs and founded a dynasty of Lutheran Prussian princes. On 10 April 1525, on the Kraków marketplace Square, he paid a tribute to Zygmunt I to Lena.

This was a large global success on the political side. From the spiritual side – half-hearted, due to the fact that princely Prussia was lost to the Church; but the remainder of Prussia – saved: Sigismund bloodyly tamed the Lutheran revolt of Gdańsk. But was it not a shame for a actual Catholic?

Especially that after 2 100 and 50 years the Prussian principality, already as a kingdom, took part in the dismantling of the Sigismund heritage. Another century brought Prussians Kulturkampf...

Historiosof pallets

From a tiny age I grew in the aura of Matejkowski canvases. I don't know which 1 pleases me more. I know, however, which peculiarly shook Poland: those which it triumphantly entered the national imagination and European salons.

It's a tussling Polish conscience Complaint (1864) and Reytan (1866). Then came the triumphant images: Batteries under Pskov (1872), Battle of Grunwald (1878), Prussian hoard (1882), Joanna d’Arc (1886) Kościuszko close Raclavice (1888), Constitution 3 May (1891).

Or just triumphant? Master Matejko was never clear. His canvases are historiographic tracts, frequently not completely decrypted to this day.

A triumphant vision

Matejowy Prussian hoard utilized to compare to large Renaissance paintings of Venetian painters, filled with light and many shades of red. This comparison is correct. Of all the works of John Matejka Longitude is 1 of the most spatial; drenched in the blue of Kraków sky and royal purple, he gives wide breath to viewers – as if in delight over the Golden Age of the Crown and Lithuania.

Here on a stretched, extended podium, dressed in scarlet of dress matter, there were actors of the political scene. As usual in Matejka, they do not precisely correspond to the actual participants of the celebration. The Master chose them alternatively according to the roles they played in the past process.

The centre of composition consists of the most important: Zygmunt Stary and Albrecht. It's hard to forget the gestures of this innerly contradictory couple. Sigismund: attentive, focused, determined – in a golden, monarchy garment – he overpowers his arm towards Albrecht, as if he pierced it through. Albrecht: in full armor, kneeling, puts his hand on the Scriptures—the motion of oath.

Above them are the symbols of the sacred and secular crown power, the tower of the Church of Mary and the elevation of the Sukiennics, as well as the signs of the sovereign and the lentils: the crowning banners and the Prussians.

Above all, we see bishops, hetmans and dignitaries of Poland and Lithuania, courtiers, theologians and artists. A solemn aura as if it was recreating in another average a image immortalized earlier by John of Czarnolas (who wrote about another later Prussian tribute):

Behold, in a fine dress and in a golden crown

The anointed of God sat on his throne,

an apple of gold and a golden rod in his hand,

And the Law of the advanced in the womb, holding.

The sword before him is harsh, but evil is only evil,

He will not make the innocent in his heart afraid.

On both sides, a noble Crown Senate, around

The prepared host stands and knighthoods face.

Come, Olbrych, young, noble princes of the tribe,

You hold in your power a beautiful Prussian land...

(Jan Kochanowski, Propellant either Prussian hoard)

Doubts

Yet on canvas we see not only triumph. Like Matejka – the artist's genius asks questions. Chorągwie: Polish and Prussian, although they emergence in parallel, disagree significantly. Poland will whip on a banner tree; Prussia – on a knightly copy, announcing the future hardness of the Prussians. Even more meaningful is Albrecht's gesture, which, in order to curse an oath, took off the iron glove and pressed it on the podium, towards viewers – like a challenge directed towards modern and posterity. Not only are the gloves of Matejkowski canvas: we see akin on Complaint and on Joan of Arc. And there they are bright signum challenges.

The audiences of this phase of historical and artistic imagination – i.e. erstwhile and contemporary viewers – are in a storm. While they are invisible to us due to the fact that they are on another side of the canvas, we can see the reactions of those who watch them (known as many master brushes: suggesting the presence of any characters outside the canvas). So, toward us, or to the agitated crowd, he turns to the anxious marshal of the Crown Court Peter Kmita, with a strong motion of both hands ordering peace. With a eloquent admonition, he leans towards us, leaned almost beyond the frame of the painting, the Burgrage of the royal castle Jan Boner. And the city cone threatens with a rod approaching malcontents (modern Matejka historians?).

And yet the most capital figure: a melancholy Stańczyk, a king's jester, sitting straight on the stages of the podium, against the background of the main stage, turned back to it, as if with a whiff.

Let us add that this is besides Matejka's self-portrait, which in this painting is immortalized twice – lending his features to Bartłomiej Berecci, the founder of the Sigismund chapel.

What does the jester think of clowns – Matejkowski alter ego?

We know the conviction of the Stanczyk indirectly – from the chronicle of Joachim Bielski, which describes how in 1527 King Sigismund went on a hunt in Niepołomice, where he was specially brought into the cage of a Lithuanian bear. The bear, released from the cage, killed the dogs, wounded the men, including a fewer large masters, yet threw himself into the procession of the pregnant Queen Bona, who fell off the horse and miscarried. The accompanying King Stańczyk escaped.

Then The king laughed at the Stańczyk; he said to him, “You have conceived not as a knight, but as a fool, that you have fled from the bear,” said the Stańczyk, “A greater fool, which, having a bear in a box, lets him go to his harm.”

Historians referred these words to the Prussian tribute and the harm he has done in our history. Matejkowski Stańczyk chews these words silently, preparing to throw them in the face of the king – and History.

Jacek Kowalski

The text was published in the 103rd issue of the magazine "Polonia Christiana" (March-April 2025).

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